VAR guide: Unified fabric servicesUnified fabric combines a traditional LAN and SAN on the same network to improve data flow efficiency. As a networking solution provider, customers will come to you for answers about unified fabric and other network convergence services. But a poor understanding of SANs could derail any business proposition. Use this VAR guide to bolster your knowledge of unified fabric services and how the technology can benefit your business.

Oracle ships ESBOracle has extended its SOA Suite with the Oracle Service Bus 11g. Some of the specific enhancements include service results cache, automated lifecycle service governance, and cloud integration.

Battle of the channel chiefsOver the past few months, we've interviewed a channel chief executive from each major vendor about their respective partner programs for our Channel Chat news series. Now we're pitting the channel chiefs' answers against one another: ProCurve vs. Cisco vs. Juniper vs. Brocade vs. Aruba. Who will emerge victorious?

Challenges and rewards of integrating commercial Web data servicesToday's applications can benefit from a wealth of data services supporting SOAP and REST. But enterprise applications along with SLAs must be carefully prepped to successfully employ such Web services. Enterprise mashups are growing as a means to tap into the Web data.